Thought for the Week: The face can reveal the inner soul of a person

That was the reason United States President Abraham Lincoln gave for not appointing a certain man to high office.

“But surely the poor fellow cannot help his face?” responded an aide urging the President to include him in Lincoln’s cabinet. The President replied: “Every man over forty is responsible for his face.” Lincoln believed that the face reveals the inner life and the soul looks out through the eyes, just as speech reveals the heart.

Moses, spiritually, refreshed after a prolonged period spent in God’s presence was unaware that “his face was radiant”. The verdict of the 19th century historian A. J. Froude was: “The face unveils the essential person.”

This commonplace assertion has good Biblical support and that truth is especially relevant as the Advent season approaches. St Paul declared that God who brought light out of darkness at creation “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The glory of God (His essential being) is revealed to human kind “ in the face of Jesus Christ”. This is the core message of the Incarnation (God appearing in human flesh).

Australian Christian businessman James Packer unpacks this truth thus: “God became Man, the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a baby. There is no illusion or deception in this; the babyhood of the Son of God was reality. The more one thinks of this truth, the more staggering the message becomes.” In the face of that Child, the vulnerability and a majesty of the Eternal is comprehended.

John McNeill, a Scottish evangelist of a century ago, was conducting mission services in a church along the River Clyde. At one service. a woman waited behind to talk to the preacher and informed him she had lived some miles from that church. “So what brought you here,” he inquired?

“I was intent on taking my own life and sought out the river and then I met a gracious woman with serenity written on her face so I followed her here.”

The face reveals the soul and that contented woman won a lost soul for the Kingdom.

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